The case against using trees and crops as fuel for cars and power plants has grown stronger in recent years. The expansion of corn for ethanol in the American Midwest has worsened water pollution and soil erosion, and has had no benefit in terms of reduced emissions. Europe’s biofuels mandate has resulted in a palm oil boom that has devastated the rain forests of Indonesia and Malaysia, driving orangutans to the brink of extinction. And now efforts like those in Germany to burn wood for fuel, known as “biomass,” have been shown to be no better for climate change than coal—and perhaps even worse.

Many have argued that the problems associated with plant-based renewable energy are anomalous. Biomass may have its problems, the story goes, but a fully renewable energy system, with prominent roles for solar and wind power, will be good for the environment.

Consider that of the four renewable energy sources with an appreciable share of the market—large-scale hydroelectric dams, biomass, solar, and wind—the two that have scaled most significantly, hydro and biomass, are attracting intense opprobrium as the devastating consequences of their widespread deployment become impossible to ignore.

At scale, solar and wind would also cause considerable environmental damage. Both have large land footprints, and due to their intermittency they require backup, which usually comes from environmentally damaging power sources such as biomass or coal. As Germany has shifted from nuclear to solar and wind power, its brown coal consumption has risen to its highest level since 1990.

Indeed, part of what’s behind the continued support for biomass, despite its evident environmental impacts, is its ability to back up wind and solar. “In Germany, for example, wind and solar generation frequently collapses for days on end during calm and cloudy spells,” Boisvert notes. “So biomass must step into the breach. Reliability is why just about every renewables plan carves out a prominent share for biomass and biofuels.”

But beyond the practical need, bioenergy keeps popping up in green energy plans because it is, at bottom, the archetypal expression of ecology ideology. Dams, palm oil plantations, wind farms, and solar arrays all convert natural energy flows carried by water, sunlight, and wind into useful energy. The objective of plans to run the world primarily, or entirely, on renewable energy is to reintegrate human society into the natural energy flows of the planet.

The problem is that such efforts to harmonize society with nature tend to be bad for both. “For most of human history,” Boisvert notes, “biomass – burned or fed to draft animals – was the main source of energy, and the cutting, growing, and hunting of it has always had severe environmental repercussions. Early modern Europe was extensively deforested to get wood for heating and charcoal for metallurgical fuel...”

Against the vision of renewables having a light footprint on the land, Boisvert notes, “The renewable energy paradigm requires an unprecedented industrial reengineering of the landscape: lining every horizon with forty-story wind turbines, paving deserts with concentrating solar mirrors, girdling the coasts with tidal and wave generators, and drilling for geological heat reservoirs; it sees all of nature as an integrated machine for producing energy.”

Ultimately, if we want to save more nature we must leave more of it alone, not harness it to power a human population of 7 going on 9 billion. “Stewardship of the planet requires that we continue to unshackle ourselves from ecosystems,” Boisvert writes, “and ecosystems from us.”

Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger are leading global thinkers on energy, climate, security, human development, and politics. Their 2007 book Break Through was called "prescient" by Time and "the best thing to happen to environmentalism since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring" by Wired. Their 2004 essay, "The Death of Environmentalism," was featured on the front page of the Sunday New York ...

Green Energy depends upon mining for Rare Earth Elements for batteries, bird blending windmills and solar panels. Few know that the Super Fuel Thorium is discarded into tailing ponds during the process. There is enough Thorium to power the world out of green energy's waste stream. Molten Salt Reactors were developed at ORNL in the 50-60s and we're not pursued due to thier inability to be used for weapons. MSRs in 1962 were slated to be Civilan Nuclear Power's design due to their efficient fuel burn (99% vs 1-3%LWRs) magnitudes of less waste and it's walk away safe design. As they need no pressure dome due to its low pressure high thermal design, it doesn't need water, no steam explosions, simple passive gravity drain to dump tanks; you have a systems magnitudes better.

for the $1 Billion a day the Green Energy and Climate Warming global spend; 600MWs daily of MSRs could roll off an assembly line like Boeing build jet aircraft with a much more complicated design than a MSR. If your are green you really need to see your waste streM for what it is. Build dense 24x7 clean, safe power and stay away from our hillsides and deserts!

In this article the Breakthrough Institute shows its true colors. It is merely a front for the nuclear power industry. BTI sees no problem in that not all plutonium can be burned up, and the leftovers will need to be protected for 240,000 years. BTI sees no problem in that Chernobyl will kill 16,000 - 36,000 people from fatal cancers. BTI sees not problem that nuclear power is the most expensive power in the world. BTI sees no problem in the fact that nuclear plants can melt down and explode hydrogen, making Fukushima into a decades-long nuclear crisis.

But hydropower, solar power, wind power and biomass energy, these are the real satans of energy supply, according to BTI. Such idiocy can only be motivated by love of nuclear power. How about BTI coming clean about its funders and where those funders get the money they give to BTI.

If you have evidence that the Breakthrough Institute is in the pay of the nuclear industry then please produce it. Last year I was invited to their annual dialogue. And shortly before this you were trolling through my Twitter account and then attacked me for not being independent of the nuclear industry because I had indirectly accepted money from the nuclear industry through the BTI. So you have form.

These are serious accusations, and if you are unable to substantiate them, then you should just admit that you are a somewhat crankish conspiracy theorist with an axe to grind.

If you have any evidence for this figure of 16,000-36000 "eventual cancers" for Chernobyl - and I have seen no credible evidence for this absurd claim, produce it.

I note that a recent publication in Lancet estimated the number of annual deaths from air pollution at over six million per year.

I also note that this represents about 16,000 deaths from air pollution daily. Thus if - and I am offerring no credibility to your unreferenced claim claim in saying this - Chernobyl were really responsible for 36,000 deaths, this would amount to two days of deaths from air pollution, none of which derives from air pollution.

There is exhaustive primary scientific literature on the health effects of Chernobyl, a failed reactor. It would serve claimants to extreme positions to read this literature, and if they have something to say, cite it. Unfortunately most citations of this type - producing extraordinary claims of death from Chernobyl - come from anti-nuke websites citing one another, running, usually, on electricity powered by coal and gas. I note that the failed reactor at Chernobyl has not killed as many people as an average coal plant operating normally.

I note with due disgust, that the claim that no one can ever do anything for any reason but money - that no one can hold a moral position - is frequently made by the members of the anti-nuke community. This says more about them than it does about people who support nuclear energy on moral grounds, since it is unambiguously clear, as noted by Jim Hansen in his recent widely read publication in Environmental Science and Technology, nuclear energy saves lives.

I support nuclear energy on moral grounds and I care not a whit that a subset of people who think money trumps everything. They are obviously unfamiliar with what it means to hold an honest, intellectual or moral opinion.

FukushimaFukushima had the luck that almost all winds went towards the ocean (and not towards e.g. Tokyo), which implied that ~97% of the fall-out went off into the ocean. Still the ~3% that did fall on land caused a major exclusion zone and contaminated people. Despite that luck and good evacuation, ~2%-7% of the children outside the Fukushima plant will get detrimental diseases (incl. premature death) due to the accident as the recent WHO report shows (despite the 1959 agreement which forces WHO to follow nuclear energy promoting IAEA in such radiation matters).

ChernobylThe detrimental consequences of Chernobyl concern hundreds of million people that were excluded in the IAEA/WHO reports. Those reports restricted themselves to only the direct involved people (not even all evacuees). And even that was done so bad that Ukraïne government produced a report stating far more casualties in those groups.

But even more than 1000miles away the health consequences were serious; up to 20% more stillbirth, up to 40% more Down, congenital malformations, etc. That could be shown due to the unique circumstance that: - population registers in districts in the south of Germany registered all serious birth defects since 1980; and - some districts got fall-out up to ~0.5mSv/year (Cs-137) from rainfall by the Chernobyl cloud that passed, while other districts did not.

The study showed an highly significant (p<0.001) sudden upswing in the downward trend of serious birth defects only in districts that got fall out! The study was executed by the official responsible German Helmholtz institute and published in a special number of peer reviewed ESPR.

This presentation shows also other studies that show other serious damage not considered by IAEA/WHO.

The New York Academy of Sciences found the disregarding of IAEA/WHO so shocking that they published a review of the thousands of Eastern-European studies which concludes that Chernobyl caused ~1million deaths before 2006. Considering the 20-60 years of delay before the harm of low level radiation shows (as LSS showed and similar with smoking, asbestos, air pollution), one must conclude that Chernobyl will cost ~4million deaths in the period to the year 2100. Assuming an exaggeration of a factor 4 by the Eastern European researches and the reviewer, prof. Yablokov, that still implies one million deaths.

Enhanced risks for children nearby nuclear power plantsThis overview shows that those power plants are even dangerous while not having major accidents.

The claim that the "New York Academy of Sciences found the 'disregarding' so shocking..." ...etc...etc... is pretty typical of how far anti-nukes will go to only hear what they want to hear, and how unfamilar they are in general of science and the scientific literature that supports it. When the academy publishes anything it is not an endorsement, but simply an avenue of discussion. It would appear from the other links within your link that there is some regret at publishing this awful garbage. The Academy said nothing. It published a book by two authors who say a lot, but probably not what the credulous people who accept them at face value think they are saying.

The UNSCEAR report has many hundreds of references from scientists all around the world. Two cranks writing a book that claims, among other things, a conspiracy exists in the IAEA to deliberately harm humanity because, well, because why? Is the claim that the highly trained and educated staff of the IAEA consists of people who are venal and cruel and who are out to harm humanity just for the hell of it? You are aware, are you not, that the organization was awarded the Nobel Peace Price? Why would someone undertake a very challenging course load to become a nuclear engineer? Because one is a backyard bully?

The "New York Academy of Sciences" link it telling. Note that if one opens the link one can find a link to a publication that demolishes this trash for what it is:

Biased selection of articles and the author's conclusions are predetermined by his belief in a totally negative effect of any dose of radiation, and he is not embarrassed with brutalcontradiction of the selected works and his own conclusions to the century-long experience in radiobiology and radiation medicine. Each section ends with conclusions about the catastrophic impact of Chernobyl radiation on human health, including increasing death rates. The value of this review is not zero, but negative, as its bias is obvious only to specialists, while inexperienced readers may well be put into deep error.</p>

Not embarassed indeed. The other link within the link from the Journal of Radiology Protection is equally telling:

On protecting the inexperienced reader from Chernobyl myths.

Now more than six million people die each year from air pollution. This is a well known and clearly stated outcome from a paper put together by an international consortium. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)61766-8/abstract

This is why there exists a moral imperative to confront anti-nuke fear and ignorance whereever it occurs, because this fear and ignorance is doing vast, irreparable harm not just to humanity, but to the planet as a whole.

I will state for the record, that I was once an anti-nuke myself, a fact of which I am deeply ashamed and for which I apologize to all future generations, should they survive. The thing that changed my mind was in fact, Chernobyl, which as serious as it was, was nothing like the holocaust I had been badgered into believing would take place. I thus undertook a long and very involved effort to understanding it myself. Understanding nuclear energy is not easy. It takes very, very, very, very hard work and effort. It's hardly involved some sloppy spewing. But what I have learned has informed ever aspect of my life.

Those of us who support nuclear energy are not the venal creeps in some puerile cartoon. We are serious people, deeply committed to trying to save the future. I am appalled that people who are so clearly lacking in moral depth feel so free and unimpeded to hand out such wild invective against us, particularly invective that harms everyone it touches.

Nadir,So you do not consider the excellent western science that show damaging effects of low level Chernobyl radiation as stated in my other links. E.g. that by the official German institute and publised in peer reviewed ESPR.

"New York Academy of Sciences found the 'disregarding' shocking"Why else did they publish only this book about Chernobyl?While they know it creates so much resistance in USA?

If it is a "regular" publication, where are the other publications about Chernobyl at their WEB-site?

N Nadir, the specter of that Greenpeace-financed drivel will haunt nuclear energy until the end of time solely for the imprimatur of NYAS, and not for any valid conclusions it might draw. One would think a scientific organization in a reasonably-enlightened locale like New York might pull this stuff from their website in shame - but it was also residents of that locale which closed Shoreham.

Rod Adams did a piece which should have laid this antinuke zombie to rest three years ago:

I was unaware of the history of this awful diatribe, and in fact, unaware of the diatribe itself.
As usual, Rod did an excellent job exploring and debunking this awful bit of ignorance.
Thanks for pointing it out.

I was unaware of the history of this awful diatribe, and in fact, unaware of the diatribe itself.
As usual, Rod did an excellent job exploring and debunking this awful bit of ignorance.
Thanks for pointing it out.

John, comparing the Chernobyl facility (with its lack of reactor containment) to a Developed Countries’ Nuclear Power Plants (with full reactor containment) is like comparing the safety of a 1950’s automobile without seatbelts to most any automobile produced today. The Chernobyl reactor design was very crude, cheap and extremely hazardous. Yes, the Fukushima plant is of modern design and the recent incident was a huge safety issue, but the impacts would have likely been much worse than the Chernobyl plant if the reactors lacked state-of-art containment. As with all technologies it’s unfortunately impossible to anticipate every feasible failure incident with 100% certainty. Despite NASA having one of the most detailed and sophisticated risk analysis processes in the world to access feasible risks to the U.S. space program, they were still unable to anticipate and prevent the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. This is unfortunately the reality of new-evolving state-of-art technologies, but it’s more important to learn from past disasters and incidents, and take corrective actions such as the improvements being made by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission following the Fukushima failure.

John, I suppose one could assume that any strong advocate for a particular technology or industry is on the take, but that kind of kneejerk reaction is unwarranted here.

BTI never suggests that leftover plutonium is not a responsibility that will last for a long time. 240,000 years? Possilbly, in the extremely remote event that we won't find a way to recycle it in the next 100 years.

I have no idea where you're getting your figures for Chernobyl, which are completely at odds with an analysis by the World Health Organization assembled by 500 radiation health specialists from around the world. It would do your opinion justice to read this report and if you still disagree, refute on a factual basis.

Airborne carcinogens from burning biomass kills more people every year than Fukushima ever will.

The crisis of Fukushima pales in comparison to the looming crisis of global warming, in light of the fact that nuclear energy is the only proven clean technology robust enough to address it.

Your comment about the price of nuclear sounds like a talking point from the Greenpeace playbook and is also contradicted by reputable statistics.

BTI's urgency, which appears to some to be demonizing renewables, is understandable. I agree with them that all renewables are vastly oversold and are a dangerous distraction from real solutions.

Everyone has a point of view which biases their perception of the world, so that in itself does not make their statements, observation, or recommendations wrong. If you believe they are wrong about the facts, then please cite an alternate source. If you believe they have misinterpreted the data, then please explain.

For example, the data you provide, 36,000 fatalities world-wide from Chernobyl (which by the way is disputed but too low to confirm via measurement) is the majority of deaths from all civilian nuclear power for the last 5 decades (and there are still zero fatalities from Fukushima radiation). Have you forgotten than coal power kills that many people several times per year (from air pollution)? Did you realize that burning biomass produces a death toll similar to that of coal (indoor fires are the worst, but power plants are bad too)?

On energy cost, did you realize that the US government Energy Information Administration refutes your claim that nuclear is the most expensive? They report that nuclear is cheaper than solar PV, solar thermal, off-shore wind, biomass, advanced coal, and fossil gas fired conventional combustion turbines (even without energy storage added to solar and wind). Similarly, a recent government study from the UK showed that new nuclear power was going to be cheaper than solar, wind (on or off shore), and biomass; by 2030 nuclear would be cheaper than fossil gas, and would remain cheaper than wind and solar. If you investigate claims of nuclear power being "too" expensive, often you'll find they are funded by the fossil fuel industry.

The anti-nuclear lobby has undermined the efforts of the environmental movement for too long. This wrong-headed ideology is prolonging our addiction to fossil fuels, and making the world a dirtier and more dangerous place.

Yes, geothermal is clean and cost effective where the resource is good, but that is actually quite rare. The US has only about 3 GWatts of installed geothermal electricity generation (29% of the global total); much of the existing systems and future potential is around California and Nevada. Although there are other places where the fluids retrieved from oil wells comes out warm, the heat from which could provide another 1 percent of so of the oil's energy.

The total geothermal energy coming from the Earth is huge, but most of it is at temperatures which are too low for efficient conversion to electricity, and lack existing water for convenient heat transfer. Most geothermal systems use rare hydro thermal reservoirs which contain hot ground water. In engineered geothermal systems, water from another source is injected into one well, warmed by the rock formation, and extracted from a second well, yielding aroud 5 MWatts per well pair (the recovered water is usually contaminated with naturally occuring toxic chemicals). Of course this require a porous rock formation which is sealed so the water doesn't escape (also rare).

In Iceland and other places geothermal energy is used to supply district heating. However, utilization of geothermal energy tends to cause earthquakes, so it is becomes less and less accepted near populated areas.

Since all sources of energy have a negative impact on the environment, minimizing their footprint would require more attention to be paid to the demand side. This approach rightly adopted by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) of the United Nationst in its Draft Strategy " GEF 2020". The strategy places "addressing the underlying drivers of global environmental degradation" at the core of its future vision.

The three drivers according to the GEF are:Population growth, Urbanization and Growth of the World's middle class.

Population drives growth in demand for commodities and services whose rationalization and optimization would have a positive impact on consumption of all resources including energy.

Urbanization would multiply the environmental pressures if not properly managed, particularly the design of efficient transportation and urban energy systems.

While growth in the middle class would increase demand for various commodities and services which need to be produced more efficiently and with sustainable environmental impacts.

I believe the energy and environmental debate should not only focus on the supply side while assuming the continuation of familiar modes of demand and consumption. Formulating original and efficient strategies for the underlying drivers is equally essential.

The sheer inadequacy and even counterproductivity of biofuels and - to a lesser extent - biomass has been very well established for quite a long time, recently again in a very accessible way by the director of the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, Noble Laureate, Dr. Hartmut Michel:

Of all the pseudo-green boondoggles that have come and gone, biofuels (and biomass, IMO) is still the champion. It appears to be little more than a handout for agrobusiness on the one hand, and (another) greenwash for the coal sector on the other (i.e. 'biomass co-firing' makes coal plants 'green')

Thanks for the link, Joris. Nice reading competent people using basic Biophysics.

One of his fundamental mistakes however, corn sugar fermentation is used to make food - not fuel. Ask your reference where all the new protein and nucleic acids and fats are coming from to serve fried chicken in China. Ethanol is a waste product from growing a yeast culture - and it happens to enhance combustion in car engines. I'm not sure the food industry really cares about ethanol - but like cow manure, what do you do with it? There is NO WAY to produce proteins, nucleic acids, and fats to feed the world using traditional agriculture.

I'm delighted to see reference to CO2 limits / photon spectral limits / C3 photosynthesis and biohydrogen and combustion efficiency. These are among the concepts needed in "solar energy stored in fuel." (I used to be able to say "solar fuel" but I think a German company has that name now. A "boondoggle" until you claim it, I guess.)

Rick, 40% of corn sugar fermentation in the U.S. is for the express purpose of making ethanol:

Thanks to Washington, 4 of every 10 ears of corn grown in America — the source of 40 percent of the world’s production — are shunted into ethanol, a gasoline substitute that imperceptibly nicks our energy problem...

Corn is hardly some minor agricultural product for breakfast cereal. It’s America’s largest crop, dwarfing wheat and soybeans. A small portion of production goes for human consumption; about 40 percent feeds cows, pigs, turkeys and chickens. Diverting 40 percent to ethanol has disagreeable consequences for food. In just a year, the price of bacon has soared by 24 percent.

Completely untrue, Bob. Nothing can or does eat some of what looks like high yield corn today. Have you ever seen a flock of crows feasting on a corn field, or a herd of deer making a corn field "home sweet home?"

"Fermentation" is growing yeast, not making ethanol. Without care, you would get acetic acid (vinegar) instead. The yeast is a culture like other cultures adapted to make cheese. A big export market for this enhanced feed product. Everybody isn't stupid.

Bob - You are being influenced by media myths reinforced by opinion page articles that have no bearing in facts. (BTW if you are going to quote something, use something newer than 2011) You may want to believe what you say, but the facts are different. The USDA reports that about 40% (it will be less this year) is delivered to ethanol refiners. Of that amount 1/3 is returned to the feed industry as DDGs. Actually the feed industry could use more. Recently the FDA issued voluntary guedelines for reduction of antibotics in animals. In supporting material for these guidelines, FDA pointed their finger clearly at "high energy feeds, such as corn, that requires use of antibotics" (and probiotics). Over the last 30 or 40 years, there has been a direct correlation in the use of corn in livestock and poultry feeds and the use of products from the pharma industry. Starch from corn is to a large degree a waste product for the animal. The standard test for determining how much probiotics and antibotics to use is to test for fecal starch. There is an emerging trend to want less corn in feed and more protein which alloows reductions in pharma inputs. DDGs generally sell for 85% the cost of corn by weight. The USDA has established a replacement value for DDGs over corn at 1unit of DDGs = 1.22 units of corn. Ethanol helps the meat and dariy producers save in two ways, reduced feed costs and reduced pharma inputs. There is no study that can draw a correlation or cause for ethanol increasing food costs. Food inflation has been less than general inflation for several years. The most significant correlation to food costs is energy costs for all the refrigeration, packaging, transportation, etc. that goes into the food before we buy it. variations in food costs track energy costs like a shodow.

Bill, the analysis of ethanol production vs. the price of corn is one complicated by subsidies, weather, and market forces. This study from Iowa State concludes that ethanol production was responsible for just under half of the increase in the price of corn between 2004-2009:

Averaging across 2006–2009, subsidies contributed an average of $0.14 per bushel (8%) to the increase in corn prices. Market-based ethanol expansion contributed an average of $0.45 per bushel, or about 27% of the total increase. Together, subsidies plus market-driven expansion of ethanol caused about 36% of the increase in corn prices in 2006 to 2009 relative to 2004 levels...

However, expansion of ethanol certainly has contributed to higher corn prices. Just under half of the change in corn prices from 2004 to 2009 was caused by ethanol expansion.

Bio-energy is truly the weak link that is undermining all of renewable energy. The energy per unit area really is astoundingly bad, at about 0.5W/m^2=> 2000 sq.km per GW,(according to D.MacKay).

But if we put aside bio-fuels, and adopt a more versatile energy carrier, ammonia, the sustainability problem is not quite so bleak. Compared to cellulosic biofuels, a given amount of land can annually yield about 5x more energy per acre when making ammonia from wind power (and the wind farm can share land with other agricultural users), and 30 times more making ammonia from solar.

When used with solar and wind power, ammonia provides the only credible means to provide large scale weekly or seasonal energy storage.

Of course ammonia fuel also is compatible with other primary energy sources such OTEC and geothermal, and even nuclear, which allows even lower impact on ecosystems and scalability to the highest population densities.

The key to ammonia’s scalability is that in addition to energy, the only raw ingredients needed to make it are water and air (the formula is NH3; unlike systems which aim to make hydrocarbon fuel, the amount of air require to make ammonia is small: 1.3 kg of air per kg of fuel). When burned, ammonia releases only water vapor and nitrogen (which is 80% of the air).

Much of the envirnomental impact of biomass, particularly as observed in the US Gulf Coast around the mouth of the Mississippi River, is in fact, ammonia, along with phosphorous, represented as fertilizer run off.

This is also a huge problem in the Great Lakes.

Worldwide, the prevalence of "green tides" and "brown tides" are also tied to fertilzier runoff, including ammonium salts and nitrates.

Right now, somewhere between 1% and 2% of the world's energy supply goes to ammonia synthesis, and it already represents a pretty big environmental problem, in the atmosphere as well as in waters, since the accumulation of nitrous oxide from the nitrogen cycle represents a serious risk in terms of both greenhouse gas potential and more importantly, ozone depletion.

I recognize that the idea is to burn ammonia, but I have a hard time believing that scaling ammonia synthesis by a factor of several thousand percent in order to run cars and trucks will not inevitably result in leaks and discharges that will exacerbate these serious problems by several orders of magnitude.

Biomass in the oceans represented by the unpleasant and sometimes dangerous tides described may be a less obnoxious route to carbon collection for the development of new classes of carbon based hydrogen carriers. A considerable body of literature has been published on the topic of utilizing these serious outbreaks of eutrophication as a carbon source, over recent years, and I've collected and read a fair amount of it. It usually involves thermal reforming, but under the right conditions, one can utilize these schemes to produce just about any carbon compound mixture one desires, from bad ones like gasoline, and jet and diesel fuel (FT varieties) to superior ones like DME, alkyl carbonates.

I wrote a long piece about it for my own edification, and I'm convinced this would be a workable approach, although I doubt it will be taken very seriously until it's too late. Come to think of it, it's already too late.

I don't think that any of the pop so called "renewable energy" schemes are realistic - and wind and solar are very likely to be vast environmental disasters that will dwarf the effects of hydro - but I'm not quite ready to throw the baby out with the bath water in some cases. There are some approaches to biomass that could be made at reasonably lower environmental impact, particularly if the approach is to clean up one environmental problem, the tides in question, to address another, carbon dioxide pollution. This of course, is only likely to be sustainable and clean with nuclear heat, and right now the planet is going through a paroxysm of hatred for the best hand feeding it, that same nuclear energy.

What would be the environmental impact of scaling up ammonia production by a factor of 100? That depends on the leakage rate. The rate today is about 100%, since we dump it directly into the biosphere as fertilizer.

I would expect ammonia fuel to have a leakage rage under 0.1%. Most ammonia will be spilled on land, and will evaporate or be consumed in the soil. Airborn ammonia tends to return to the ground in rain (I would think at much lower concentration than agricultural run-off). So a ballpark estimate ranks it as more benign than fertilizer.

This said, in theory, the fixed Haber nitrogen in fertilizer is not really designed to "escape" but rather to be consumed in protein synthesis. Obviously the process is inefficient.

That said, I'm not sure that combustion would be efficient either. I'm not sure that I'd accept that 0.1% leakage figure in light of the fact that the combustion (and/or use in fuel cells) of ammonia will certainly result in the release of some nitrogen oxides, these being the real problem.

Industrially, nitrous oxide, N2O in many ways the most problematic of the nitrogen pollutants over the long term, as it is the most stable, has been made by the thermal decomposition of ammonium nitrate, a compound that is bound to appear in a combustion chamber where ammonia is being burned.
Catalysts for the destruction of N2O are known, but they are not remotely as efficient as the Pd/Pt/Rh catalysts in gasoline engines, designed to decompose carbon and nitrogen oxides. These catalysts of existing types basically have no effect whatsoever on N2O, although they're pretty good for NO, NO2 and other NOx systems. Moreover the known catalysts operate at very high temperatures and I'm not sure they will have a very long lifetime. (Some are cesium based.)

In the atmosphere, the basic sink for N2O is radiation, where the reaction sequence involves the decomposition of ozone, an obvious problem. N2O is almost as inert as N2 itself, and that's a problem. This reaction has been going on for billions of years, of course, but in the last century the ancient equilibrium has shifted.

All of these nitrogen compounds, the other NOx as well, have significant atmospheric half-lives, and while you and I agree that fossil fuels are problematic - I abhor all dangerous fossil fuels and believe (although I know it won't happen) that they should all be phased out on an emergency basis - it would be very difficult to convince me that ammonia is the best combinatorially optimized substitute for fossil fuels.
With the sincerest and deepest respect for your opinions, we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

Nadir, I have not been ignoring the ammonia warning from you and others. I read all the presentation from the annual Ammonia fuel Association conference, paying particular attention to any mention of safety and environmental issues. So far, all the presenters who actually work with ammonia seem to believe the safety challengers are manageable. Few if any of the presenters appear to have any vested financial interest in ammonia's acceptance; most seem to be researchers whose labs are more aligned with hydrogen, fossil fuel, or renewable energy.

For example, this presentation by an Italian team working on a plug-in hybrid truck with an ammonia fueled ICE, had this to say on slide 18: "NOx is the only meaningful pollutant found in the exhaust emissions ... However, NOx emission is not a problem since the use of a SCR is eased by the presence of ammonia onboard."

Similarly, this presentation, Renewable NH3 and Direct NH3 Fuel Cells slides 13-22, gives results for a commercial fuel cell, intended for use with natural gas, when it was run on ammonia: "No residual NH3, or NOx was detected in the stack effluent gas, or effectively zero emissions operating on ammonia. NH3 performance surpasses natural gas due to lower stack temperature gradient ".

I'll keep looking for experimental results that show ammonia to be a bad choice, but so far, I haven't seen any.

I agree with Nadir that ammonia will never make it as a liquid fuel. Besides the N2O issues in combustion, it is dangerous to have around. There may be some case to be made for furan based fuels but they have a long way to go. The correct blending of alkanes and alcohols make a great fuel (and BTW leave out the aromatics). There are a few commercial microbial processes that excrete alkanes or alcohols that are at the commercial level right now. All they need is CO2, sunlight non-potable water and nutrients that can be recycled. These PhotoBioReactors (PBRs) take a little bit of space but not much and it can even be a salt flat (no soil quality needed). Yields are in the 15,000 gal per year per acre range. (I dont' think your amonia systems can match that.) And BTW, urea is becoming the standard nitrogen fertilizer as it is more stable, easier to handle an more available to the plant. CO2 is becomming the big feed stock for microbes and while the extreme greenies may not think it is renewable, this double duty cuts your GHG emissions in half. In the long run we just need bio- CO2.

"Yields are in the 15,000 gal per year per acre range. (I dont' think your amonia systems can match that.)"

As of today, the only system that beats ammonia for energy per unit area is hydrogen (which has limitations due to storage difficulty). This is easy to prove, since solar PV beats every known system for solar energy conversion efficiency, beating plant based systems by an order of magnitude. (Of course nuclear power offers enormously higher power per unit area, for communities that accept it.) Conversion of electricity to hydrogen is around 70% efficient, and hydrogen to ammonia is around 80% (with lab scale electricity to ammonia synthesis using reverse fuel cells having been demonstrated already with efficiency near that of hydrogen).

Ok, but the human world is dominated by positive feedback, for example the dominant suppliers win the affection of the people and the politician, so that the market can't be shared with alternatives. As a result, the only stable low fossil fuel system is a zero fossil fuel system. My claim is that the "renewables with fossil backup" system is really designed to prevent phase-out of fossil fuel. I would say the same about "fossil with CO2 capture and reuse".

For this reason, I favor renewables and nuclear with dispatchable fuel synthesis, as this system requires no fossil fuel backup. Of course this system will be accepted first in nations which lack a domestic fossil fuel industry (due to positive feedback), however I believe there are many such nations. All it will take is for one of the superpowers to demo the technology and adopt it in enough niche markets (e.g. heavy duty truck, trains, combined heat & power, off-grid renewable backup, etc) so that the ammonia fuel industry becomes larger than the fertilizer industry.

Of course I am open to alternative syn-fuels. No doubt there are some hydrocarbon-based fuels that that are very nice; but for them I am awaiting an inexpensive and environmentally benign carbon source. Baseload hydrogen from pipelines will be important to industry, but many fuel applications require convenient storage which H2 can't provide. Recyclable metallic fuels like powdered boron or zinc may be useful in applications that have historically used solid fuel (trains, ships, power plants), but are not well suited to cars and trucks.

"Bio-energy is truly the weak link that is undermining all of renewable energy. The energy per unit area really is astoundingly bad, at about 0.5W/m^2=> 2000 sq.km per GW"

Nathan, I would say crops sepecifically grown for bioenergy... Germany is running their energywinde at the moment but an interesting outcome of this is that a comparison of sorts can be made between the effectiveness of biomass, wind and solar in how they reduce CO2 and cost. This is laid out in the AGEE stats specifically 'development of renewable energy sources in Germany' series. On all counts of investment needed, subsidy required, people employed (less is better), revenue generated, wind or biomass far outscore solar. I would suggest that solar is the weak link for renewables in Germany.

Now I am not necessarily advocating biomass as an energy source as even if Germany could use all its biomass for energy needs, it would probably only account for at best 15-20% of their energy needs and some of that is specifically grown. I am just trying to point out that biomass can be useful if managed correctly and the corn ethanol issue could certainly have been managed much better. Robert Rapier has good views on this.

A "The glass is half full" discussion might conclude our primitive biotechnology can and should be greatly improved upon. The scenes of mass starvation are gone. And properly managed biotechnology might be among our best tools to save Nature.

One consistent error; deforestation was not caused by using firewood. A living tree root will almost invariably sprout new shoots. Deforestation was usually caused by cattle grazing, then plowing after about a decade. We do need competent regulatory oversight without the political garbage.

A very shallow and poorly researched article by the BTI. It doesn't really provide any insight nor anything new in my opinion. The authors pretend to be knowledgable by building their thesis as a counter argument to a strawmen they themselves build.

The main strawmen of most of the BTIs publication appears to be the tiresome stereotyping of everyone that disagrees with their fav. technology as unrealistic/naive/unscientific/emotional/...

I agree. They seem to be stuck in the last century. To me, biofuels do not necesarrily mean something derived from BioMASS but something that has developed from the emerging bio-reolution of the 21st century. Our ability to understand the genomes of living things is growing exponentially. Our present focus is on those amazying microbes that can preform industrial tasks in new and hitherto unanticipated ways.This may have just emerged in the last 5 or 6 years, but hay, if you think you are an expert....!

Interesting perspective. I share Boisvert's view that high penetration renewable energy will probably rival current high penetration fossil fuels in terms of environmental impact. The large land footprint of wind turbines, solar panels and energy crops is one thing, but arguably the largest concern is the enormous amount of material and energy intensive storage and the enormous HVDC supergrids that will be required to balance the intermittent output.

If the current situation of 2% non-hydro renewables and 87% fossil fuels ever reverses, we may well long back to the good old days. Not only will the environmental impacts of renewables be very large, but the impacts of fossil fuels will suddenly appear very small. An interesting little experiment about this is to Google "wind protest" and "coal protest" and see which gets the most hits while keeping in mind that coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel and supplies 30 times the energy that wind supplies.

Fossil fuels are not the problem, the enormous rate at which we burn fossil fuels is. Unfortunately, this problem is set to get much bigger as 6 billion developing world citizens strive towards western fossil fueled materialism...

BTW, does Boisvert give some more specifics about how we might "continue to unshackle ourselves from ecosystems and ecosystems from us"?

"The large land footprint of wind turbines, solar panels...."The land footprints of wind and solar is substantially less than that of nuclear!

NuclearEven neglecting the (large) land foot of the uranium mines, etc., a 1GW NPP has a land foot print of ~1KW/m².

SolarRooftop solar (which is by far most solar in Germany) occupies no land at all.If 50% of all roofs in Germany are covered with low yield (~15%) solar panels, than they generate >100% of all electricity Germany needs (>700TWh). And now the better solar panels generate ~50% more per m².

WindOffshore: those wind turbines have no land footprint!Onshore: The footprint of a 7.5MW wind turbine is ~400m². So the power density is ~20KW/m², 10-20 times better than nuclear.

"BTW, does Boisvert give some more specifics about how we might "continue to unshackle ourselves from ecosystems and ecosystems from us"?"

From what I've read from Biosvert, he's a pro-nuke. Nuclear power is as 'unshackled' as you can get, because it is not carbon based, run day or night, requires(!) virtually no water or wind and is almost invisible. When built underground - as is proposed for the more advanced mini-reactors being developed, it actually *is* invisible.

Do you have any reference material that provides a sense of the energy intensity of building supergrids?

As far as environmental impact, newer findings are that powerline right of ways are interconnecting "islands of habitat" as development splits it up. So in fact it is emerging that transmission lines are acting to preserve biodiversity.

While I agree that biocrops are not a good thing, the contention that windpower has a substantial land use impact in comparision to coal is absurd. Much of wind power is sited in agricultural and ranch land where it is symbiotic and when removed the land immediately reverts to prior use. Compare that to the impact of mountain top removal which substantially and irreversibly degrades ecosystems, biodiversity and water resouces.

Fossil fuel apologists constantly try to suggest that there is an acre to acre equivalency. This is the height of perverse cynicism. And yet, sadly, it works in swaying public opinion. How can one equate the temporary use of an acre of ranchland or farmland with the permanent destruction wrought by mountaintop removal?

Unfortunately, I am yet to find a good source on the EROI of HVDC grids, but it should be much better than batteries anyway. However, this depends on how far the idea is pushed. Diminishing returns in terms of intermittency mitigation via increased interconnection combined with the low capacity utilization from transporting variable solar/wind output will make VRES HVDC much more intensive in terms of material and energy use, footprint and cost than the HVDC lines currently used in standard dispatchable power systems.

I'm struggling to understand how a network of 70 m bulldozed channels criss-crossing the countryside can be good for the environment. Could you give some more info?

When it comes to the things causing public opposition to wind farms (e.g. visual/sound pollution & impacts on avian life), it is the overal W/m2 footprint that counts. Some of these resistances might sound irrational, but just ask the nuclear industry how powerful such resistances can be.

Have you looked closely at rare-earth mining and processing? I've not looked into it much (it is difficult because almost everything comes out of China), but some stories make it sound pretty bad. Imagine if this operation is to be scaled up by more than an order of magnitude and the industry is driven to whatever is the mountaintop removal equivalent of rare-earth mining.

I agree, it is unfortunate that the NIMBYs are getting traction with wind power. That is why I would like to see us moving away from onshore wind in high population density areas particularly where the Capacity Factors (CF)s are relatively low. However utilities have a century of practice at gaining transmission right of ways so it may not be as bad though that remains to be seen.

That is a very general statement about renewables that really does not apply to high CF wind from the Great Plains. The point of using HVDC is to bring high CF power from there. Prime sites in Texas, NE, KS, ND and SD are relatively untapped. The current 37% CF is based upon sites that optimize for transmission access rather than CF.

I would like to see us using HVDC to access 50% CF sites which make reasonably good use of the transmission capacity. Much of the routing is through agricultural land for which transmission has minimal environmental impact.

When going through forested areas there is tree loss but the hydrology is not significantly damaged as in mining of coal. Ample vegitation is permitted, which addresses erosion and wildlife cover. The primary restriction is that it not grow tall.

The cost of HVDC looks pretty reasonable. It is discussed in detail in the JCSP '08 and EWITS reports. This comparision, from EWITS, gives a pretty good sense of the associated costs.

As to rare earths, I will leave that ball in your court to provide some quantitative basis for concern. However I will offer this as a starting point. It takes about 1/2 ton of coal to generate 1 MWhr a 6 MW turbine at 50%CF displaces about 72 tons of coal per day or 525,600 tons over 20 years. With a VERY conservative strip ratio of 1 that works out to 1 million tons of material mined. We know that even in the relatively highly regulated US, pollution related to coal mining is pretty significant. And after burning, the residual ash is is a highly problematic pollutant. A 6 MW turbine using permanent magnets requires about 1 1/2 tons of rare earths. So yes rare earth's have their problems but I have not seen anything leading me to believe that it is of the same order of magnitude as burning coal.

This remark suggests that you believe that wind power is an option to replace coal. It isn't. Coal plants are designed to run at much higher capacity utilization than wind plants can ever achieve.
You also seem to imply that lanthanides are as available as coal. They are not. The processing to remove neodymium from the other 13 lanthanides plus yttrium, scandium, and thorium involves considerable waste handling, this for a product with a very low energy to mass density.
The mines being run in Baotou in China are something of an environmental disaster.
http://www.rural21.com/english/a-closer-look-at/detail/article/the-real-price-of-rare-earths-0000296/
Rather than utilize the thorium in the waste as nuclear fuel - which by the way has an extremely high energy to mass density - it is currently dumped. Indeed the thorium so dumped could power the world for generations, were it not for the fear and ignorance associated with nuclear power. In any case the "waste" is radioactive and the only way to reduce this radioactivity (over the long term) is to fission the thorium.
Happily China is considering this, and there are environmentally responsible ways maybe to reduce the impact of lanthanide mining but for right now, wildcat lanthanide mining as well as some that respects weak Chinese laws is no picnic. As is the case with all of the drawbacks associated with so called "renewable energy," glib people always want to sweep these considerations under the rug in an "out of sight, out of mind" kind of way.
To suggest that mining lanthanides is better than coal is rather tantamount to announcing it is better to require a heart transplant than to have lung cancer, even if one were to believe the unbelievable, that wind power and coal power are related. Clearly they're not, or else the Germans wouldn't be so busy building new "green" (as advertised) coal plants at the same time as they are building wind plants.
A better option would be to require neither a heart transplant nor a lung cancer treatment, and a better idea would be to not build wind turbines and not build coal plants.
Neither will ever be as sustainable as nuclear energy.

"...wind power and coal power are related. Clearly they're not, or else the Germans ..."Clearly they are! As a more accurate look into German electricity generation history shows.Just look a little further than the small year-to-year fluctuations (mainly due to the cold weather of the last years here).

This graph delivers a nice overview covering the last six years. It shows that more renewable implies less fossil, incl. coal burning

I love your bio - "Nnadir is a long term blogger whose writings involve making ascerbic comments on various kinds of papers . . . ." - And given the fair warning won't take your apparent reference to me as "glib" personally ;)

I appreciate that you provided reference to support your position on rare earths and hope you will add further to this discussion as I would be interested in learning more about the downside mining rare earths. It would be nice if you provided some more sophisticated and quantitative comparisons between coal and mining rare earths. I am not so sure that the people in West VA who were ordered not to drink their water would agree that coal mining and related industry is relatively benign.

You do realize that you are playing both sides of this one don't you? On the one hand you seem to suggest that we shouldn't be mining rare earths because of radioactive waste and then turning around and suggesting that we should but should be harvesting the radioactive materials for use in nuclear reactors. Further clarification will be interesting.

Regarding wind power. Germany and the US are very different. German Capacity Factors (CF)s are quite low. US interior states offer 50% CF sites if we build the transmission to them. Our offshore is quite good as well. They are far enough apart to be statistically decorellated. In an aggregatation the capacity credit can be quite high. If you read the EWITS study you will find that their modeling came out before the 100 meter NREL wind survey showing some amazing 50%+ CF sites in NE, TX, KS. It is also important to note that in that study CF was not the only optimization criteria. So even given the models that they had they had to leave good sites on the table due to considerations such as existing RPS etc.

Back to Germany - they have pretty much used their best sites and are at average CF of around 20%. We have barely touched our best sites which offer 50%+ CFs at 100m tower heights. If you think that 50% CF and 20% CF yeild equivalent situations then we have nothing to talk about. If you understand that they are very different things, particularly when combined with decorrelated offshore resources at 45% CF, then we may have some interesting times ahead.

I think it is also noteworthy that they are flaring an astonishing amount of gas in ND which if put into power plants in ND and used for balancing, they could further improve utilization of HVDC lines to that area.

I think the question needs to be reframed to be meaningful. If the choice I have is a strip mine being put in at a site that might poison my water supply and a mining industry so powerful that they leave me questioning the integrity of the state agency in charge of assessing my water or a power line nearby, I will choose the power line.

My desire is to find solutions that minimize the number of people who suffer and the degree to which they suffer. Do you have a solution that eliminates power lines and mining and all of the other consequences of grid connected power? Do you live off of the grid? Do you feel that everyone should?

Clayton, here is a study from the University of Wisconsin suggesting that wind "significantly reduces property values":

This paper uses data on 11,331 property transactions over nine years in northern New York State to explore the effects of new wind facilities on property values. They find that nearby wind facilities significantly reduce property values in two of the three counties studied. These results indicate that existing compensation to local homeowners/communities may not be sufficient to prevent a loss of property values.

That is one of the studys linked to in Barnards metastudy. It represents a pretty small datapoint. But no doubt, one could find ways to site wind turbines to impact property values if they worked at it.

The broader question is what is the best way to maintain our standard of living and access to energy in such a way that addresses climate change and a variety of other consequences with minimal impact.

Most people do not stop driving to protest those who lose property to eminent domain for roads. It is what we deal with in order to have a modern civilization. My interest is in constructive debate about the best ways to accomplish this. I do not pretend that the ways that I favor are the only ways. Based upon what I know I think they are the best. I am interested in learning what others bring to the table. For example, Schalk has expertise in CCS. I am looking forward to his sharing further information about how that technology works, hoping he will talk about status, estimated cost of development etc. Likewise there is a lot of discussion about Thorium reactors. Something I have not had time to delve into but its on my list.

As far as wind power, I favor placing it in the central states which is mostly rural farm and ranchland which is highly symbiotic. Here is a post of farmland in Indiana. The farmers seem content to have wind farms on their land. They probably get paid pretty well.

I think the bigger issue is that of HVDC transmission lines. Again, much of the path is through rural farmland. It also requires smaller right-of-ways for a given amount of power. DC power is much different in that the fields are not oscillating thus eliminating any hum. Also, and this is just me, I would be far less apprehensive about being near high DC fields than AC fields.

Do you have thoughts on approaches to addressing the energy challenges we face that have less impact on people?